The moratorium on new water connections in the Goose Creek basin has been lifted after more than a decade.

The moratorium, first established in 2002 to protect the federally endangered Carolina Heelsplitter Mussel, was lifted by the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission by an unanimous vote Thursday, May 9.

The mussel lives in the Goose Creek Basin, but none have been found in Mint Hill.

The Goose Creek Basin covers the southeastern portion of the town, an area where roughly 30 percent of the Town of Mint Hill’s population resides.

The moratorium has kept a large number of Mint Hill residents from receiving water service from Charlotte Mecklenburg Utilities.

“I’m really excited that folks that have been in town for many, many years now have the option of tapping onto Charlotte Mecklenburg water,” said Town Manager Brian Welch.

Water is expensive. It’s a necessity. It’s a commodity. And it falls right out of the sky.

Mark Hazen and Michael Helms realized this, and realized that water shortages can be a serious problem and expense to homeowners, and have worked for nearly the past year to establish The Rain Exchange.

The Rain Exchange installs a system to catches the rainwater that falls on a homeowner’s home or property, and stores that water in an underground storage tank for later use.

“We’re starting to see that water is getting more and more expensive, and we have customers who spend $800-900 per month on their water bill,” Hazen said, adding that this system could save 60-65 percent of that water usage.

The way the system works is simple, The Rain Exchange will install downspouts on the house’s gutters, collecting all runoff rainwater from the roof and diverting it into a buried storage tank.

Connected to that storage tank is a pump, which allows that water to be used in a number of ways, depending on what the homeowner would like to use it for.

Mainly the water is used for irrigation, washing cars, and general outdoor water use, but it can also be piped back into the home and used in toilets and washing machines, and if a special filter or purification system is installed, could even be used as drinking water.

Lyn Millward first learned to knit as a teenager, an exchange student in Sweden between her junior and senior year in high school.

But as life happened, she drifted away from the art, until her daughter received yarn and knitting supplies for her eleventh birthday.

She relearned how to knit to help teach her daughter, and it wasn’t long until she was knitting, crocheting, learning new skills and even teaching classes at her LYS (local yarn shop), Cottage Yarn in Mint Hill.

Her daughter, Chloe, worked at the shop on weekends, and one day,the previous owner called to let Chloe know she was retiring. Lyn was concerned about the future of the store, and would eventually take over as owner.